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Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Single Grave > Bell Beakers

I've been studying in detail the genetic substructures within the Bell Beaker population with formal statistics and Principal Component Analyses (PCA). As far as I can see, among the two most homogeneous, and thus least likely to be recently admixed, Beaker groups are the Dutch Beakers and also the Dutch and British Beaker males belonging to Y-haplogroup R1b-P312. This, of course, makes good sense, because both the Dutch and British Beakers are so called Rhenish Beakers.
The results are also in line with the observation that the Dutch Beakers are the quintessential Beakers in terms of physique, with three quarters or more sporting exceedingly brachycephalic, planoccipital skulls (like this).
Moreover, these two Beaker groups are among the most Yamnaya-like Beakers, with almost as much Yamnaya-related ancestry as the Corded Ware culture samples from Germany (~60% vs ~70%). As a result, in my PCA of ancient West Eurasian genetic variation the Dutch Beakers form a more or less continuous, west to east cline with these and other Corded Ware individuals that runs all the way to the Yamnaya cluster.

In the same PCA, the R1b-P312 Dutch and British Beaker males form a tight cluster at the apex of a Beaker cline that stretches to European Neolithic groups with no steppe ancestry. The only Beaker who is positioned clearly east of the Dutch/British R1b-P312 Beaker cluster is from Hungary, and in all likelihood he harbors recent Yamnaya ancestry because his Y-haplogroup is the Yamnaya-specific R1b-Z2103.

These findings potentially have important implications for the origins of the Dutch Beakers and the Beakers who dominated much of Central and Western Europe during the Bronze Age, and these are:

- the Dutch Beakers are unlikely to be the result of a recent migration from afar into what is now The Netherlands and surrounds, but rather the descendants, by and large, of the earlier local Single Grave (and thus Corded Ware) populations
- the R1b-P312 lineages in the Dutch and British Beakers probably derive from Single Grave R1b-P312, which suggests that R1b-P312 was common among some clans within the Corded Ware culture
- the spread of most of the Yamnaya-related or steppe ancestry and quintessential Beaker physique across the Beaker world and into Western Europe can probably be blamed on the massive expansions of Beakers from what is now The Netherlands and surrounds (ie. the Lower Rhine region)
- late Yamnaya groups contributed some ancestry to eastern Beaker groups, such as those in the Carpathian Basin, but the Dutch Beakers acquired their high level of Yamnaya-related ancestry from their Single Grave predecessors, who, in turn, acquired it from their proto-Corded Ware ancestors from the steppe.

122 comments:

If this is true, then it’s interesting to see how the majority and most widespread of both historical and modern-day Indo-European languages and ethnic groups, even in Europe, can be potentially traced back to Corded Ware.

We had a good 1 year run on Anthrogenica discussing the possibility of L51 in Corded Ware. One of the two options (the other being the Moravian Corded Ware group which is considered its own group by archaeologists) was the Single Grave Culture. The thread was closed down due to the usual L51 is not from the steppe, wasn't IE speaking came from Iberia crap.

Here is a "greatest hits" list of most relevant posts about Single Grave Culture and L51:

@DavidskiThe evidence you've presented, along with the latest (credible) linguistic evidence has convinced me that this is the most likely hypothesis. I'm looking forward to future aDNA studies that could confirm.

@Them meee

Yes, it looks like Corded Ware was quite a massive expansion. If this hypothesis holds, Corded Ware derived languages were spoken from Bengal to Ireland since before the birth of Jesus. That's pretty extraordinary.

We also need to differentiate between the P312+ groups. P312>L21+ are an outgroup to the other major lineage P312>ZZ11 which is the root of DF27 and U152. Due to the similarity between Dutch and British beaker, perhaps this sprung P312>L21 only. P312>L238 is also nearly exclusively Scandinavian, and may have spread as a minority lineage among the R1a-Z284 CWC group.

As always, everything will depend on the ancient DNA and the reliability of the dates with C14. With respect to south-western Europe and the Atlantic facade, it will be interesting to compare the percentages of steppe ancestry and the antiquity of P312 in those regions. Obviously the custom of making individual burials of warriors can come from the single grave culture. That can not be discussed.

Violence in the Single Grave Culture of northern Germany? Gundula LidkeDOI:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199573066.003.0008

This chapter discusses the Single Grave Culture (2800–2000 cal BC) burials from northern Germany, focusing on trepanation and healed trauma. It shows that single graves were not necessarily the most important burial rite for this group. A programme of radiocarbon dating has placed a number of injured individuals from megalithic graves in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein, and Lower Saxony, not in the Middle Neolithic as expected but within the Late Neolithic Single Grave horizon. Virtually all individuals from this period with signs of trepanation are males and a context of male-dominated, mostly non-lethal violent interaction is proposed for the observed pattern.

This is all true, apart from the fact that Dutch and British BBS are more than likely derived from those Bell Beaker folk from the Rhineland. One of Coon’s greatest predictions was concerning the spread of at least the Central European Beaker folk, and he said so much too (largely mimicking archaelogists).

Gerhard should also be looked at, along with Coon he was by far the most knowledgeable as far as physical anthropologists go. I’ll post some links once I get back from my lecture.

So this would be consistent with a pattern of P312's "son," DF19, forming and radiating out from somewhere in the Low Countries, Germany or south Baltic shore into Britain and modern Germany continuously over the last 3,000 years; and the changing coastlines, acidic soils, cremation and lack of excavations in the right spots combine for not one DF19 showing up until 6Drif23 in a Roman York burial?

Considering that the Corded Ware derived folk are hypothesized to have been heavily implicated in the ethnogenesis of the original Persians, Turks and Mongols, to name but three great ancient cultures, their achievement is all the more awesome yet.

For those of you who are adept in linguistics, what would this imply as far as NW-IE and Balto-Slavic-Indo-Iranian languanges are concerned? Where would each group be, where did the split happen and what language could we expect Yamnaya to have spoken?

“For those of you who are adept in linguistics, what would this imply as far as NW-IE and Balto-Slavic-Indo-Iranian languanges are concerned? Where would each group be, where did the split happen and what language could we expect Yamnaya to have spoken?”

Recently I was waching a video from 2018 Vienna Genes talk #GIA18:John T. Koch “Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution”Unfortunately this video has been deleted.Koch prefers Ringe-Warnow's tree for IE phylogeny and places great emphasis on satem and RUKI grouping of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. He equates satem with Corded Ware and related Steppe_MLBA.He also presented a map based on Allentoft 2015 genetic study with marked centum and satem languages which looked more less like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/SKdxQfYW/satem-centum.png

As far as Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages are concerned his map resembles map from“DER SPIEGEL” 12.05.2018 based on Willerslev research.

Conclusion of the dissertation of Beckerman (2015) Corded ware coastal communities: Using ceramic analysis to reconstruct third millennium BC societies in the Netherlands.

“The present study shows that ongoing supra-regional contacts and exchange characterize not only the Corded Ware period but also the transition to the Bell Beaker Culture. Several different possibilities have been proposed in the past for the transition from the Corded Ware Culture to the Bell Beaker Culture. Lanting and Van der Waals (1976) postulated that the development from Corded Ware to Bell Beaker must have been continuous and that Bell Beakers were a local development in the middle and lower Rhine regions (Lanting and Van der Waals, 1976: p.4). Besse (2004: p.137-142) and Hübner (2005: p.750) both propose intra-regional variation in the transition to the Bell Beaker Culture. In the northern and eastern parts of the Bell Beaker distribution area, Corded Ware plays a major role in the emergence of the Bell Beaker Culture, yet in the southern part of the Bell Beaker distribution area the transition is more radical (Besse, 2004: p.142). Salanova (2001) proposed on the basis of ceramic analysis that there were movements of people. According to Salanova (2001), the fact that Bell Beakers with high uniformity in decoration are found all over Europe and are used together with many different local forms is an indication of potters moving into an area as well as ongoing traditions. The pattern observed by Salanova (2001) fits the pattern observed on the Noord-Holland sites with Corded Ware ceramics and those with Bell Beaker ceramics, because at both types of sites, regional types as well as supra-regional types were used and likely produced. The start of the Bell Beaker period is often linked with an important new technology: copper working (Brodie, 2001, p.487). Brodie (2001, p.487) postulated that copper working spread throughout Europe in a south-east to north-west direction and that Bell Beakers vessels may have tagged along. “

As far as I can see, among the two most homogeneous, and thus least likely to be recently admixed, Beaker groups are the Dutch Beakers and also the Dutch and British Beaker males belonging to Y-haplogroup R1b-P312.

Its certainly possible that you are correct (though I still expect it to be from the yamnaya push) but your reasoning begs the question. Where did the initial mixing of MN and Steppe take place, and when did it homogenize?

I suppose your position is that the mixing took place further east in CW and homogenized along the way or in the low countries itself. You still must recognize that the homogenized Rhine Beakers came from a heterogeneous population. So why not the heterogeneous Hungarian yamnaya mixed population? I suppose that might mean less time for people to homogenize in the low countries but its very possible that the homogeneity of the Rhine beakers occurred because they are only a subset of the Central European Yamnaya and they further homogenized on the route to the low countries.

Right now we have the dilemma that CW is mostly r1a and Yamanaya is mostly Z2103. It is still more likely that L51 lived along side Z2103 rather than r1a. If a few more samples from yamnaya hungary come back exclusively Z2103 then I will re evaluate.

The first encounter of the respective archaeological cultures - CWC & BB - occurs already in south-western Germany and Switzerland, with BB having the dominant position. There the population swells and migrates north along the Rhine and into the Alpine region. I think your observations might be spot on, and Bell Beaker might have acquired its CWC-like autosomal profile through exogamy before this major expansion.

That doesn't tell us much about the male progenitor of the R1b-L51 Beakers, but I think it's most likely that one of the thousands of tumuli in the Carpathian basin holds the answer.

Where did the initial mixing of MN and Steppe take place, and when did it homogenize?

It was a gradual process that probably started on the steppe north of the Black Sea, and then in and around Poland, and finally in the Low Countries, maybe during the contacts with the Atlantic groups that led to the formation of the Beaker ethnos.

That's probably why the Dutch Beakers are around 60% Yamnaya, the German Corded Ware ~70%, and the early Baltic Corded Ware over ~80%.

You still must recognize that the homogenized Rhine Beakers came from a heterogeneous population. So why not the heterogeneous Hungarian yamnaya mixed population? I suppose that might mean less time for people to homogenize in the low countries but its very possible that the homogeneity of the Rhine beakers occurred because they are only a subset of the Central European Yamnaya and they further homogenized on the route to the low countries.

The Rhine Beakers don't derive from the Hungarian Beakers. Rather, some of the Hungarian Beakers clearly derive from the Rhine Beakers.

One of the most Rhine Beaker-like Hungarian Beakers is the male that belongs to R1b-P312, which should tell you something about the direction of the migration.

And Yamnaya has nothing directly to do with the Rhine Beakers either, because if it did that would also be easy to pick up.

We'll see, but I think the Baden region is where Coon sees the original brachycephalic population that absorbs the skeletally Nordic CWC elements. Who knows how informative of actual population dynamics those skull measurements are, but the point is that original Beaker ancestry in the Dutch BBs might already be very reduced depending on how strongly exogamous the initial population was.

I'm not invested in L51 from Hungarian Yamnaya, but it's the most economical solution for now for the reasons Colin mentioned.

The Swiss Beakers sampled so far are very late. We would be talking about a migration that precedes those developments by many centuries of course; the one that lead to the separation and subsequent diversification of L51.

It's most convenient to derive that migration from the Carpathian region based on what we know thus far.

It isn't. The Hungarian/Bohemian Beakers are migrants from the west, this much was abundantly clear even before we had their DNA.

L51 began to diversify before the emergence of the Bell Beaker phenomenon. That's where my version ends. When & where L51 males co-opted Beaker culture, which route they took etc. I do not know. I strongly agree with Colins that they were more likely come from the vicinity of the phylogenetically close Yamnaya men though.

@Stevan,"Do eastern and southeastern Europeans derive ancestry from the Bell Beakers or is this restricted to western Europe?"

No. Bell Beaker ancestry correlates with distribution of R1b L151. So, most of the ancestors of people in France, Spain/Portugal, British Isles, and Northern Italy were involved in Bell Beaker culture (some were the ones with R1b L151, some locals who already lived there).

If anyone's still confused about this: the Hungarian Beakers are very mixed, with some looking almost like Dutch Beaker migrants to Hungary, but most like a mix of Dutch Beakers and Hungarian locals, and one guy like he's 50/50 Dutch Beaker/Yamnaya.

There are different ways to show this, it's not just a PCA thing, but it's easy to spot in a PCA like this...

It's a great challenge for our international team how to determine whether the appearance of the steppe related ancestry is associated to the Bell Beaker population bringing some Corded Ware gene-pool or it is associated with the real (?) Eastern European Yamnaya groups who erected kurgans from the end of 4th millennium BC in the Great Hungarian Plain. The first comparative analysis suggests that both scenarios contributed to the new genetic diversity of the early Bronze Age, but in different extent.

There is a very interesting outlier I have identified in BB Hungary - I3528. He is G2a, obviously a ''Neolithic farmer'' lineage, however he's got elevated WHG (much more so than Baden or Vucedol contemporaries). He even has more WHG than the U152 Hungarian Beaker.

This is just more proof that German_MN/ GAC like individuals had been present or already been making their way into the Carpathian basin independent of the so-called ''Dutch Beakers''. In fact, I think its rather obviuos that Dutch & Quedlinburg Beakers are a founder effect from the larger pool of Bavarian & Hungarian Beakers. This is in line with the archaeological (& aDNA!) evidence, which shows episodic population replacement in the Rhine region, which served as a transit way rather than origin point.

At the moment, I still incline toward a Yamnaya-Danube origin for BB, but i think the Lech region study might help sway either way.

Davidski I think this would be a strong possibility but then the question is to the formation of the SGC. If you go back and read Volker Heyd’s comments in Kossinna’s Smile he considers some of these Neolithic groups thar along with the CWC contributed To the SGC.

I think I know what you're suggesting, but unless there's strong evidence to the contrary, then we have to assume that all of the main Y-chromosome lineages in Corded Ware came from the steppe, especially those under R1a-M417 and R1b-M269, because these markers are recorded on the steppe in Corded Ware-like individuals predating the Corded Ware expansion.

+ Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations-Anna Juras

By analyzing ancient mitochondrial genomes, we show that people from the eastern and western Corded Ware culture were genetically differentiated. Individuals associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture (from present day Poland and the Czech Republic) shared close maternal genetic affinity with individuals associated with the Yamnaya horizon while the genetic differentiation between individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture (from present-day Germany) and the Yamnaya horizon was more extensive.

The mitochondrial data further suggests that with increased distance from the source populations of the steppe, the contribution of local people increase, which is seen as an increase of maternal lineages of Neolithic farmer ancestry in individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture.

That is to say, as the CWC settlements were advancing towards the west, they were losing steppe ancestry and were mixing with indigenous women from the German Neolithic cultures.

But it's clear that those men were R1a-M417, that is, unless R1b-L51 is found in the Baltic countries, Poland or the German Neolithic cultures, it is evident that geneticists will have to look for it more in the West, that is, France.

I am convinced that Stockhammer will solve this problem, that is, the sudden appearance of P312 in the BB culture. On the other hand Iñigo Olalde will also continue to provide data from Iberia. Someone spoke before the culture of the Argar (2,200-1,500 BC) which is clearly R1b-M269, but is heir to the culture of Los Millares (3,200-2,200 BC). I hope that the Harvard geneticists have analyzed some site of this culture. In any case, the entry of P312 and the steppe ancestry in Iberia (2,500 BC) is very important because they would be the oldest cases in Europe except the Germans.

I would not give such importance to the Dutch BBs because we have very little information about them and I would focus on the Alps and the Rhine River valley.

The relatively high level of steppe ancestry (~60%) in the Dutch Beakers, but lower frequencies of steppe mtDNA in western Corded Ware, doesn't bode well for the theory that R1b-P312 is native to Western Europe.

That's because if the excess steppe ancestry in the Dutch Beakers can't be associated with maternal ancestry, then the sensible thing to do is to associate it with paternal ancestry.

Now, it's true, a lot of weird things can happen with Y-haplogroup frequencies, but at this point I would find it very strange if R1b-P312 wasn't an important marker in at least parts of Single Grave territory.

And I'm not sure if the Stockhammer et al. paper will solve anything if it just shows a sudden appearance of R1b-P312 in the study area during the Beaker period, because this won't tell us which direction it came from.

But if the early Beakers in the paper are basically identical to the Dutch Beakers, then the Lower Rhine region is a good bet.

I understand what you are saying and reading other posts in this forum I have seen that you have used the mitochondrial haplogroups several times to support your reasoning. It seems logical because obviously we have to take them into account.

In the case of the Dutch BBs Olalde only cites an old case of which we have spoken dated roughly in 2.432 BC if I remember correctly. If you remember his mitochondrial haplogroup is X2b4, the same as the P312 brothers from Sierentz (Alsace) buried a few years earlier. But X2b4 is one of the few mitochondrial haplogroups of the Western CWC that have been documented in Germany.

I0049- Corded_Ware_LN-Germany-Central-X2b4-4464-4210. The data is from Francesca Tassi (2017)

This means that the oldest Dutch mitochondrial haplogroup that we have related to BB culture is German,so you can justify his 60% steppe ancestry through his maternal lineage (X2b). Then P312 from Oostwoud has very little steppe ango ergo is Western (Alps, France, Bavaria?

I think you're right in your approach, although this will surely bring you criticism from stubborn people.

There are many coincidences among all the BB regions, and of course none of these haplogroups has been documented in the steppes but some in the CWC.

Obviously there were also steppe and Iberian migrations, and all of them coincided in Germany.

Due to its geographical nature, Hungary is a perfect territory to be a mixture of cultures that is exactly what we see in the archaeological, anthropological and genetic evidences. There is no way to think that it had a male (or female) population homogeneous enough to be considered the origin of the BBc culture or of course L51 / P312. Its burial custom is typical of the Yamnaya, but its pottery is absolutely NOT Yamnaya, but local Balkan with imports of disctintive corded beakers (Schnurbecher), that is, men descended from Yamnaya (Z2103, I2a ...), and local women. Further in time, more migrations (BBC) or exogamy

The BBs in Hungary and the Czech Republic are clearly very minority and intrusive.

So probably Khvalinsk is the most correct explanation for bringing steppe ancestry to Europe, probably through the Baltic countries and Poland.

Does anyone have an idea why Bell Beaker (and BB-descended) people in Spain, Britain and Ireland lived in round houses, whilst those in central Europe (and areas like the Netherlands) lived in rectangular houses? Also the early Latins lived in round or oval huts.

The deposits where BB pottery has been found in Spain and Portugal are very numerous, varied and cover a very long period of time (2,800-2,000 BC). Therefore there are all kinds of settlements, large cities of more than 1000 inhabitants (Los Millares), with walls, water cisterns, food stores, rectangular houses, small settlements with round houses and no defensive concerns (Tagus valley),Villages of more than 100 hectares of extension with defensive pits and round houses....

I believe that there is no general type of construction, at least in Spain.In any case, the migratory nature of this culture has meant that until very recently, very few settlements were located. However there are hundreds of tombs with all kinds of different burials.

@Diego “+ Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations-Anna Juras

By analyzing ancient mitochondrial genomes, we show that people from the eastern and western Corded Ware culture were genetically differentiated. Individuals associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture (from present day Poland and the Czech Republic) shared close maternal genetic affinity with individuals associated with the Yamnaya horizon while the genetic differentiation between individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture (from present-day Germany) and the Yamnaya horizon was more extensive.

The mitochondrial data further suggests that with increased distance from the source populations of the steppe, the contribution of local people increase, which is seen as an increase of maternal lineages of Neolithic farmer ancestry in individuals associated with the western Corded Ware culture.“

Do you remember that I posted about a month ago, that Polish people have both uniparental Steppe markets, and therefore approximate the Steppe population more than Western Europeans?

“Once upon a time, the Bell Beaker folk enjoyed the reputation of being a culture of 'prospectors, metallurgists and traders' who introduced metal-working to large areas of Europe.

Van der Waals

On both sides of the North Sea, it has been noted that the occurrence of metal objects in Bell Beaker graves is not exactly a normal, every-day thing; in Britain and in the Netherlands only one Beaker grave in twenty contains any metal at all. In the German Rhineland, it is not easy to see whether there existed any Bell Beaker metallurgy at all: how many Bell Beaker metal objects are actually known in that region? (in SAM I we find mention of only two)”

Quite the contrary, we intend to show that Bell Beaker smiths did actually introduce metal-working into the Netherlands

1-Beakers with maritime decoration (zonal decoration of diagonal dentated spatula hatching, alternating in direction from one zone to the next- They occur as stray finds with a scattered distribution, but there are also the settlement finds from Oostwoud (Van Giffen, 1 9 6 1) and Vlaardingen (Altena et al., 1 962, p. 233) Although their decoration clearly belongs to the Atlantic Bell Beaker tradition, other elements in this group already represent eastern influence. Moreover, in the Vlaardingen Bell Beaker level a small polypod bowl is also considered to be of Central European origin (Sangmeister, 1 963, p. 29).

That is to say, in the first moment of the BB in the Netherlands, a mixture of styles can already be seen, maritime style (which on the other hand is the only one common to all of Europe) together with Central European influences. Does that mean there are different uniparental markers? Who knows ?. Of course Oostwoud is P312 and very old, but there are no more sites studied until 300 years later.Its mitochondrial haplogroup clearly belongs to the CW. The explanation would be very simple if the dating of Dutch ceramics was older, because the style could be considered a variant of the CWC, but the maritime style in Brittany, Galicia and Portugal is 200 years earlier.

That is why we have been discussing the origin of the BBC for 130 years (dating, styles, customs and now genetics). Many smart people trying to find a solution. Surely we will find it.

@diego, I guess there will always stay an interpretive part, thanks to that phenomenon like BB are a mixture of pots and people, so migration/genetic and/or cultural spread.

I guess in the Dutch/NW German case BB as a Single Grave derivative has, thanks to the analysis of Davidski, good cards. Of course there could be earlier influences of the Atlantic world. But especially the NE part of the Netherlands has one constant factor in his population development: it's connected with the Northern European Plain. Or as the archeologist JJ Butler once stated: the North Dutch are on the end of the Nordic rainbow.

See this picture from the period after the BB (Elp period). https://www.mupload.nl/img/nyeprlypow.png

Every time is the river IJssel (a branche of the Rhine) the split:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJssel(Even up till now this is a kind of genetic border in the Netherlands).

This is also the split in BB time:https://www.mupload.nl/img/q3q6t0hhi278y.10.03.png

I will not go further in minor details. But the conclusion that BB is a Single Grave derivative is, as CW has spread all over the Northern European Plain and with (North) Dutch area as is the most western offshoot, makes totally sense!

.From that perspective this make more sense than an Atlantic genetic influence on the Rhenish BB. That doesn't rule out some Atlantic influence on the BB by 'idea's' or 'pots'.

It is true that it makes sense but leaves many questions open and the main one is the origin of R1b-P312. The cultural and material relationships are much less important while supposing that we can find L51/P312 in the single grave culture is certainly risky. Of course it is much more reckless to try to bring it from the steppes.

If L51 appeared in the Baltic Neolithic cultures, then the connection would be evident. It would also be if it appeared in the SGC and even in any German Neolithic culture. Given how this world of genetics works, it seems like a brave step in the right direction. Those who stay behind will no doubt lose credibility.

@Them meee "If any paternal farmer ancestry were to be found in Beakers, it would likely be I, G or J, not R1b, because again, R1b-M269 is from the steppe"

X2b4 is a mitochondrial haplogroup typical of the CWC (75% Yamnaya). If that woman had a child with haplogroup Y-R1b-P312 that only has 60% of steppe ancestry, where do you think the farmer ancestry came from? Obviously from R1b-P312. It may be an exceptional case, but it would be a miracle that this happened in the oldest case of R1b-P312 that we know in the Netherlands and that the opposite would happen in the rest.

R1b-M269 could be a steppe marker, but we have R1b-P297 in the Latvian mesolithic hunters-gatherers of the Narva culture, which are fundamentally WHG. The farmer ancestry had not yet reached R1b.

We need samples from CWC Denmark to begin the trail that leads to I1 and when an autosomally Germanic population rose, as well as the source of R1a-M417 (Z282+, L664+) and R1b-L151 (U106+, maybe P312+) in Germanics alike, given the former could very well be from Battle Axe. In the latter case we have these scenarios:

-An early population already rich in both R1b-M269 and R1a-M417, preceding the Nordic Bronze Age

-A later mixing of Battle Axe people rich in R1a-M417 and nearby Jutish Single Grave people rich in R1b-M269 that gave rise to the Nordic Bronze Age

-A later mass migration of Bell Beakers or a closely related group rich in R1b-M269 mixing with Battle Axe to form the Nordic Bronze Age

Any of these scenarios could have given rise to the Germanic peoples, and only further research will solve this mystery.

@Them. For the Nordic Bronze Age the following scenario looks real to me.BB is R1b P312, for R1b U106 is BB too early.But what comes after Bell Beaker. Yep Sögel-Wohlde as a kick start of the Elp culture.The Olalde sample R1B U106 Oostwoud is 1881–1646 calBCE that’s part of the so called Hoogkarspel culture what is a part of Sögel-Wohlde/ Elp culture.

Prof Harry Fokkens (1998):''The northern Netherlands is part of the northern group (NW Germany and Denmark) especially of the Sögeler Kreis characterized by a number of distinctive men's graves. The Drouwen grave is the best known Dutch example.It's remarkable that the Elp culture has never been presented as the immigration of a new group of people. Because clearly this period was a time when a number of new elements made their entry while others disappeared. The disappearance of beakers, the appearance of the Sögel men's graves with the first 'swords', among other things, the fully extended burial posture, under barrows; all the factors have been reason enough in the past to conclude that the Elp culture represented an immigration of Sögel warriors."

Crucial:- immigrants that swept away the BB heritage;- a warrior cult "to the max", only man were buried in rich Tumulus graves!

The Sögel Wohlde culture was very expansive and expanded in a range North Dutch, NW Germany up to Jutland. This influenced the the developement of the Nordic Bronze Age. This influenced the neigbouring Valsømagle (less R1b) culture of Northern Jutland, Seeland and Southern Sweden and Norway.

The remarkable thing is that about 1500 BC, the Sögel- Wohlde culture complex collapsed, the Valsømagle culture expanded towards the Elbe and represented the Nordic Bronze Age.

Steppe ancestry obviously didn't enter Central and Western Europe via the East Baltic, because when the Corded Ware people rolled into the East Baltic, practically all of the hunter-gatherer Y-haplogroups disappeared there and were replaced by R1a-M417 for several thousand years.

You can read about that here, and do take a close look at the Y-haplogroup results...

I have given the example of X2b4 because it is the oldest of Oostwoud, but could have used any of the other 11 mitochondrial haplogroups that are known in that site to try to demonstrate that the steppa ancestry of the Dutch BB comes from their mothers and not from their parents.

What do you think ? they all come from cultures with high percentages of steppe ancestry Yamanya, CWC) and yet the Dutch BBs lose percentage. That means that where R1b-P312 appears decreases the steppe signal.

@ Davidski "Steppe ancestry obviously didn't enter Central and Western Europe via the East Baltic, because when the Corded Ware people rolled into the East Baltic, practically all of the hunter-gatherer Y-haplogroups disappeared there and were replaced by R1a-M417 for several thousand years"

Yep, I know, but I refuse to believe that the Latvian R1b did not have offspring because that would avoid many headaches and make it more likely that they had somehow joined the CWC.

Technically we have already an U106 sample from Sweden that predates the Nordic Bronze Age. He belongs to the Nordic Late Neolithic I period. According to Davidski, RISE98 is very similar to the Dutch Bell Beakers, although with a bit more WHG on average. It doesn't look like RISE98's ancestors came from anywhere far south. I guess he was a descendant of Danish Single Grave people or maybe Jutish/Baltic Bell Beakers (or both).

The Salzmünde Tabiano Coloured Horse is still for me an indicator that Steppe people were in or very near that area around 3200 BCE. just prior to Corded Ware formation. So the Walternienburg-Bernburg Culture would be one of the stopovers of Steppe peoples migration to the West. U5b2a2 I think is one of the farmer related lineages which was picked up somewhere between Northeastern Poland and the Saxony Anhalt. U5a1b I think was picked up from the Ukraine Neolithic area. The other stopover on their way to the West I think was near Dümmer and from there on to the Netherlands.

@Davidski "That's not a convincing argument" I Know but there is the possibility

+ the Dutch Beakers are unlikely to be the result of a recent migration from afar into what is now The Netherlands and surrounds, but rather the descendants, by and large, of the earlier local Single Grave (and thus Corded Ware) populations. I do not know what you think about it

Agree, I think the example I have given of mitochondrial haplogroups explains perfectly that they are descendants of CW women (and also of women descended from the steppes). which would explain its high percentage of steppe ancestry in relation to other European BBs

+ the R1b-P312 lineages in the Dutch and British Beakers probably derive from Single Grave R1b-P312, which suggests that R1b-P312 was common among some clans within the Corded Ware culture

Agree- "probably"- But they can also be descendants of Western Neolithic populations (Germany, Alps, Franco Cantabrian region). In fact, if the Dutch BBs inherited the steppe ancestry of women this is the best explanation for the origin of P312.

+ the spread of most of the Yamnaya-related or steppe ancestry and quintessential Beaker physique across the Beaker world and into Western Europe can probably be blamed on the massive expansions of Beakers from what is now The Netherlands and surrounds (ie. the Lower Rhine region)

Agree, Migrations from Germany to other BBs regions are absolutely proven.

Regarding "the quintessential Beaker physique across"- I suppose you mean the brachycephaly, then I agree that it has alpine origin, but beware, also Pyrenean, since the Neolithic there are Iberian deposits with dolichocephalic, brachycephalic and mesocephalic skulls. It is a physical characteristic that also depends on environmental, climatic and physical conditions.

- late Yamnaya groups contributed some ancestry to eastern Beaker groups, such as those in the Carpathian Basin, but the Dutch Beakers acquired their high level of Yamnaya-related ancestry from their Single Grave predecessors, who, in turn, acquired it from their proto-Corded Ware ancestors from the steppe.

Agree.

The only reason for discrepancy may be the possible origin of P312 in the SGC. It could be, and apparently we have U106 among the Dutch Beakers which could be an indication that L51/L11 is not far away.

But Olalde's paper (february 2.018) has led many people to get the wrong idea about the time of the expansion of P312 and its relationship with BB culture, because the substitution of the supposed autochthonous Y-haplogroups of Western Europe occurred mainly to from 2,100 BC and throughout the Bronze Age (2,000-1,000 BC). Before the situation is more confusing and raises doubts about the origin of P312. These are the results obtained by Olalde in relation to the fundamental period to understand the expansion of the BB culture (2,550-2,301 BC)

It seems clear that initially (2.550-2.301 BC), Haplogroup Y-R1b-P312 can not be linked alone with the expansion of the BB culture because 8 of the 19 European sites analyzed (42%) and 34.28% of men ( 12 cases of 35), have haplogroups that do NOT belong to the haplogroup R1b-M269 (23-65.71%), that is, I2a (8 samples-22.87%), G2a (2 samples-5.71%), R1b- V88 (2 samples-5.71%). In total, in this period of 250 years (2,550-2,300 BC), haplogroup I2a has been found in Iberia (5 samples) and Hungary (3 samples), G2a in Iberia (1 sample) and Germany (1 sample) and R1b-V88 in Iberia (two samples).

I6539/Humanejos (2.325 BC)- HapY-R1b-P312. Mit-T2b3+151

This is the first case of P312 documented by Olalde in Iberia, and we know from the abstract of his new paper that both P312 and the steppe ancestry entered Iberia 2,500 BC.

I don't know where you think R1b-P312 is from, but the Dutch Beakers probably have very little ancestry from Western Europe, including the Lower Rhine.

Most of their ancestry is from Eastern Europe, and that includes most of their ~40% farmer ancestry. They probably also have some farmer ancestry from Central Europe too, but I don't know how much.

So their R1b-P312 can't really be from Western Europe, unless you claim that their practically 100% frequency of R1b-P312 is due to a massive founder effect. But the problem with this claim would be that R1b-P312 actually correlates very well with steppe ancestry in Beaker populations.

I don't see the point of fighting against what already happened and will be proven beyond any doubt when enough data are sequenced.

@Diego "apparently we have U106 among the Dutch Beakers". There is no R1b U106 sample found among the Dutch Beakers. The R1b U106 from Oostwoud West-Frisia is 'post Beaker' from 1881–1646 calBCE. That is Sögel-Wohlde/ start Elp culture.

I'm curios what is the genetic connection of the Sögel Warriors? Much (their gear) is pointing at the Moravian, Hungarian room......

Female exogamy was common in Bronze Age Europe, and that's practically the same thing.

But there are a couple of problems with invoking female exogamy as the explanation for the high level of steppe ancestry in the Dutch Beakers, like the fact that R1b-P312 shows a strong correlation with steppe ancestry in Beakers, and also that the Dutch Beakers don't have much less steppe ancestry than the nearest Corded Ware samples.

So the idea that the Dutch Beakers became ~60% steppe due to female exogamy simply doesn't ring true.

I have already said that I believe that P312 originated in the Franco-Cantabrian region that includes the southern half of France, a region that is not very far from the territory of the SGC. But obviously I would also be satisfied if the explanation were an origin in Germany.

And yes, the European Neolithic and Chalcolithic population was much less numerous than we think, there were large tracts of unexplored and uninhabited land, and any haplogroup could produce a massive founder effect in different regions and periods. It may be the case of Df27 in Iberia, L21 in the isles, but also the case of P312 in France.

Netherlands- You have very few samples of Dutch BBs, in fact I5748 seems more an outlier than a solidly established community in that territory, that is, it is very difficult to establish the genetic characteristics of a human population with so few samples.It would be much easier and more reliable to do the same with the German BBs.

@ weure is right, the Dutch U106 sample already belongs to the Bronze Age, like the other 10 samples of Dutch BBs, dated between 2,000-1,700 BC.

@Bastian- Not women driving migrations, but small family groups migrating. The possibility of exchange of women between different cultures or human groups as some geneticists and archaeologists think is much more difficult and controversial, although it is true that mitochondrial haplogroups are constantly repeated among the different BB European regions with two major foci of expansion Germany and Iberia.

@ DiegoYou have very few samples of Dutch BBs, in fact I5748 seems more an outlier than a solidly established community in that territory, that is, it is very difficult to establish the genetic characteristics of a human population with so few samples.It would be much easier and more reliable to do the same with the German BBs.

This is an empirical question of supervised classification.In a supervised classification model with Random Forests I find that both Beaker_The_Netherlands and Beaker_Hungary have an error error rate of 100%.Beaker_The_Netherlands is classified 7 times as Beaker_Britain and 1 time as Beaker_Central_Europe.Beaker_Hungary is classified 1 times as Beaker_Britain and 7 times as Beaker_Central_Europe.As Beaker_The_Netherlands is nearly identical to Beaker_Britain, I would say that the 8 samples of Beaker_The_Netherlands can be sufficiently discriminated for most purposes.

@Davidski- "More Central and Western European admixture in the Single Grave population than in German, including eastern German, Corded Ware populations"

Territory of the SGC-southern Scandinavia, Low countries, and northern Germany.

If I do not misunderstand you, what you are saying is that R1b-P312 has its origin in that territory and that it lost part of its percentage of steppe ancestry because in the SGC there were more women from central and western Europe than in the CWC of Germany. To prove this, you need western mitochondrial haplogroups in the samples we have seen in the Netherlands (or Scandinavia or northern Germany) and that is not the case at the moment.

Regarding the SGC,three types of objects are (in this order) the most popular grave goods- protruding foot beaker, stone axes and retouched flint blades.

Interestingly, the flint knives are exclusively produced of Scandinavian flint (Van Gijn 2010,141-143), but nevertheless, during the transition period from the Single Grave to theBell Beaker period, there is a clear deviation from this custom, because the Belgian (Wallonian)-French flint starts to be used. It may therefore represent a shifting orientation of contacts and exchange networks from north (Scandinavia) to south (eastern Belgium/France).

In the Netherlands the beautifully crafted ‘daggers’ made of honey-coloured flintfrom Le Grand Pressigny or Romigny Léry in Central France (e.g. Beuker 2010; Van Gijn 2010) only appear in association with All Over Ornamented beakers. The AOO phase marks the start of the Bell Beaker Culture (cf. Fokkens 2012a). The AOO beaker-GP dagger associationalso marks the development of contacts with southern regions.

The Single Grave Culture is generally dated between c. 2800 and 2400 cal BC (cf. Lanting and Van der Plicht 1999/2000). All Over Ornamented Beakers share more or less the same dating range, probably between c. 2600-2400 cal BC (Beckerman 2015,157 ff.)

The Dutch archaeologists observe a very early change of trend (2,650-2,550 BC) in the SGC of the Netherlands, the contacts with the north are abandoned and the influences of the south (Belgium and France) begin, this period of time when it had to take place also that genetic change-

That's when I think P312 appears, along with the pottery, copper and the rest of the BB package.

@ Bastian "I just meant to say that what Diego is on about sounds like special pleading to me. A little bit of wife swopping isn't going to equal real migrations....or what?"

It depends on the number of inhabitants that Europe had at that time, probably a small family migration of 50 people was enough to create a massive founder effect in a certain territory. I find very difficult to think that women would travel alone, unless they were exchanged by women from other clans.

@ huijbregts- You are already using the 8 Dutch samples of the Bronze Age, no ?. I speak of Oostwoud 15748 that appears absolutely alone in the record of ancient Dutch DNA with a difference of more than 300 years with the rest.

This is probably nothing, but I always enjoy it when new data seems to gesture toward controversial linguistic theories (see also: Elamo-Dravidian). Could we be seeing an early radiation of IE-speaking people who left a trace in subsequent languages?

"The term Nordwestblock itself was coined by Hans Kuhn, who considered the inhabitants of the area neither Germanic nor Celtic and so attributed it to the people a distinct ethnicity or culture up to the Iron Age."

If we accept the typical dates given for the divergence of Celtic and Germanic, then yes. It is very likely that there were IE languages that existed in Western Europe that did not belong to the Celtic or Germanic families.

However, if we accept an association of the steppe Beaker culture with a proto Italo-Celtic-Germanic language grouping, then it is likely that many of these lost languages were closely related to both Celtic and Germanic.

The few people people that constructed the Northwest Block theory mentioned it as possibly connected to Italic. One of those leads is that in large parts of the Netherlands there are toponyms connected to water which can be reconstructed to have an "-apa" suffix, which could be connected to "aqua" and points to a "kw -> p", a feature, if I recall correctly, resembling Celtic and some Italic languages.

The confusing thing is that some consider Q-Celtic to be older than P-Celtic...So maybe the "p" was later arrivals to that area. In other words Q-Celtic and Q-Italic ancestors I think were in the Northwest Block...

The sound change arguments around the preserved 'p' that was lost in Celtic are interesting partially because that would indicate some shared phonetics with Lusitanian , which Prósper claims is in some ways similar to ancient Ligurian .

I've long been fascinated by the Hungary_BA samples Davidski used to have on his PCAs b/c of remarkably-perfect E-W cline (I would've guessed a N-S from the Steppe). Any thoughts on that, with the new BB, Mycenaean, etc info?

@Diego “The Dutch archaeologists observe a very early change of trend (2,650-2,550 BC) in the SGC of the Netherlands, the contacts with the north are abandoned and the influences of the south (Belgium and France) begin, this period of time when it had to take place also that genetic change-“

Very unlikely the Northern part of the Netherlands are naturally bounded with the Northern European plain and did did not abandoned the contacts with it. The influences of South became evident in the Hilversum culture. But that a Central Dutch/South Dutch thing. And is MBA.

It’s like you are searching for every stray to prove that there is no SGC connection......

''The Dutch archaeologists observe a very early change of trend (2,650-2,550 BC) in the SGC of the Netherlands, the contacts with the north are abandoned and the influences of the south (Belgium and France) begin, this period of time when it had to take place also that genetic change-

That's when I think P312 appears, along with the pottery, copper and the rest of the BB package.''

The G-P flint connection is connected to AOC cermics and SGC/ CWC -type burials only (E-W orientation). It is abandoned with the arrival of BB groups, so it is hard to link them.

R1b-P312 can’t be from France either. That reminds me of Maju and his Megalithic R1b theory. It clearly is from the steppe, and uniparental markers do not gel with the idea steppe ancestry is female-mediated at all.

That's a pretty sweeping and outdated generalization! Sounds like you're talking about the older generation who voted for Brexit. At least 48% of us feel strongly European. As for an 'English national myth' I think you must've read too many articles from the British tabloids. Shame on you, for such a stereotypical, biased and ill-informed view of what it means to be a British European. Now what nationality did you say you were Mr tabloid reader?

Dutch beakers model best with a steppe ancestry source. The best model of all is when CWC_Germany is used as steppe source. The same applies for the other northern beakers and for late southern beakers.

R1b(xR1b-V88), R1a and Q were majoritarily in Eastern Europe and Western Siberia, as can be seen in EHG, Ukraine_HG, Baltic_HG, Khvalynsk, Sredny Stog, Steppe Eneolithic, Botai, and Yamnaya. These populations all shared high proportions of ANE (except Baltic_HG), implying an ANE origin, which is further reinforced by the presence of R* in Mal'ta, Q clades in AG2, Kolyma, North Okhotsk coast and Amerindians, and their mutual ancestor P1 in Yana RHS, which were ANE's ancestors.

Well, I dropped the language aspect since weeks. Í know that siberian U came from Europe or the Near East. C was from the East Asian portion. My intent was to possibly connect certain mtDNAs with P1 and its descendants inside the ANS-ANE population.

@ Juan- yes I see. Still, for ANE-rich groups, there might have been more than 1 wave arriving around or after the LGM. It would be worthwhile to look into U4, which unlike U5 or U8/U2, has not yet surfaced in European Paleolithic samples.

@ Ric''At the end of the day R1b L51 and R1b Z2103 were basically siblings. Just something to refresh the memories''Yes I know that & agree. Im just pointong out that R1b-L754 arrived to Europe earlier, and for different reasons than, say, Q1. It reached all the way to western Europe by the end of the Paleolithic (Iboussieres). Still, M269 expanded from near/ on the steppe. I think virtually averyone agrees on this point now.

Remeber, abstract on to be published ancient Iberian DNA. It said modern Iberians have some 'Mediterranean' & North African admixture that Iron age Iberians lacked.

We know the North African stuff is from Moors. It ranges from 5-10%.

The Mediterranean ancestry must be from Italian Romans. This mysterious Mediterranean ancestry also exists in France & lesser so in England. The main candidate for admixture would be Roman veterans. Y DNA can give clues as to whether this is the case.

To say, the Eastern Mediterranean ancestry in Italy arrived in the Roman period is absurd. I'd say, since 0ad Italy has been one of the most genetically stagnant locations in Europe.

Very unlikely the Northern part of the Netherlands are naturally bounded with the Northern European plain and did did not abandoned the contacts with it. The influences of South became evident in the Hilversum culture. But that a Central Dutch/South Dutch thing. And is MBA.

It’s like you are searching for every stray to prove that there is no SGC connection.....

I do not say that there may be some kind of connection, but I came here to explain my point of view, because obviously I do not think that part of the CWC was R1b. I find that it is materially impossible at least with the data we have at the moment. To sign that you have to know the SGC very well.

On excavation levels 5 and 6 three grave gifts were found:a protruding foot beaker, a small stone axe and a retouched flint blade. The Twello flint knife was probably made of Hesbaye flint, also known as Light Grey Belgian flint. This glassy opaque type of flint is grey to light grey in colour and found near Avennes, again in Belgian Wallonia (Knippenberg 2014).

Interestingly, the non-GP (Grand Pressigny) flint knives are exclusively produced of SCandinavian flint (Van Gijn 2010, 141-143). The Twello blade however deviates from this pattern because it was made of Belgian flint. It may therefore represent a shifting orientation of contacts and exchange networks from north (Scandinavia) to south (eastern Belgium/France)

The Twello burial demonstrates that it cannot simply be assumed that the position of the deceased and the character of the grave goods were gender-specific during the Single Grave Culture

"The grave goods of Twello are common for Single Grave Culture burials, but The raw materials used for the stone axe head and flint blade appear to originate from the south (eastern Belgium), whereas the blade typo-chronologically shows more similarities withthose from northern regions (Scandinavia)".

"We think that this is significant, because thee Single Grave culture is generally seen as a tradition that has strong links with the north and the east, but much less with the south".

That is to say around the year 2,500 the SGC begins to have commercial contacts with the south, and that is what appears at that moment? Oostwoud-P312 with a mitochondrial haplogroup typical of the German CWC.

6- R1b-M343 lineages may have thus brought WHG ancestry to the north Pontic steppe during the Mesolithic,

7-Latvian hunter-gatherers- in different periods dated from the end of the 9th millennium BC to the end of the 4th millennium BC, (Zvejnieki, Kunda and Narva cultures 7.465-7.078, 6.000-5.100 BC), (Jones et al, 2.017, Mathieson et al, 2.017).

Jones et al (2.017)-Further, the Y chromosomes of two of our Latvian Mesolithic samples were assigned to haplogroup R1b (the maximum-likelihood sub-haplogroup is R1b1b), which is the most common haplogroup found in modern Western Europeans (R1b-M269/P297). This haplogroup has been found at low frequencies before the Late Neolithic in Western Europe but at higher frequencies in Russia and is suggested to have spread into Europe from the East after 5,000 cal BP (3.000 BC). The presence of this haplogroup in Mesolithic Latvia points to a more westward ancestral range.

The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region- Alissa Mittnik- "Local foraging societies were, however, not completely replaced and contributed a substantial proportion to the ancestry of Eastern Baltic individuals of the latest LN and Bronze Age". The Latvian hunter-gatherers R1b-P297 survived

"Our Mesolithic samples document the presence of haplogroup R1 in Romania as early as 8,814 ± 261 cal yBP and R1b at 8,703.5 ± 268.5 yBP, which corroborates a wide distribution of the haplogroup in Europe before the Bronze Age"

We do not need to bring R1b-M269 from the steppes to explain the history of our haplogroup.

As Davidski says not even the Hungarian plains are the solution because of the evident genetic distance with the Central European BBs. The last trench of those who think that R1b-M269 spread from the steppes to Western Europe, is to look for a steppe connection (not only Yamnaya) -CWC-SGC-BBC. We'll see what happens, I still think that P312 is Western, but time will tell who is right.

Of course an influence from the southwest of Europe is possible, but IMO this could be more in the category, 'pots' than 'people'.

When it were 'people' then such a move must make basically sense.....

What I see is that Beakers in the Netherlands are primarily a North (east) Dutch phenomenon!

So if the BB influence or movement came from the southwest why there is such an empty BB space in and around nowadays Belgium?

In the bigger picture North Dutch is in the movement of people alway been connected to the Northern Plain. Of course there can be exceptions to this 'rule'. But seen the geographic position of the Dutch BB.....how on earth there was a population 'jump' from SW Europe to Northern Netherlands/NW Germany?

Obviously sailing, the entire European Atlantic coast from the south of Portugal, Galicia, Brittany, is full of maritime campaniforms, which I have already said is the only one common to all of Europe. At least that is what I believe. The other alternative is the river Rhine. The SGC contacs with Belgium and France could be punctual, however the BBs, came to the Netherlands to stay. But I do not think they are a branch of SGC, because the material culture is absolutely different and they also came with metallurgy.

Seems to me like the late and post Single Grave groups from the Lower Rhine took advantage of the burgeoning Bell Beaker cultural exchanges across Central and Western Europe and became Bell Beakers themselves.

@Diego, the spread of the Belle Beakers didn't follow a specific river, not the whole Rhine track for example, they had a typical inland northeastwards orientation.And the didn't have a typical coastal orientation, at least the most of them are high ground sandy places: the Veluwe, Drenthe, Twente (the Twello example is very obvious).

See this map of the NW BB:

https://www.mupload.nl/img/yk6p5dfyc65sa.10.03.png

The highest chance of a sailing connection are some of the Central Dutch Beakers (nr2). And why would they sail around Belgium and leave it alone?

The case of Belgium, is the same as in the Spanish Cantabrian coast and Bay of Biscay where there are no BB sites. However, the entire Portuguese Atlantic coast to Galicia has numerous deposits and from there they jump to Brittany, never to Asturias, Cantabria or Gascony. Why?. I have no idea, they seem more accustomed sailors to navigate the high seas than to follow the coast lines. The Neolithic routes to Ireland were known since the Neolithic and the megalithic culture spread from Iberia with a great genetic contribution. Archaeologists have no doubt of this commerce or marine migrations. The same happens in the north of Morocco with BBs burials that have identical Mit-haplogroups that the Spaniards that is to say, absolutely Europeans. From there, the deposits do not follow the coast line to Algeria, jump to the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Liguria, the Rhone. etc. It is a maritime people that also extended by land following the course of the great European rivers.

@ Davidski-"Seems to me like the late and post Single Grave groups from the Lower Rhine took advantage of the burgeoning Bell Beaker cultural exchanges across Central and Western Europe and became Bell Beakers themselves"

There are many scientific disciplines that can help us solve the mystery. For example.

Angelina Munster- "The animal data show that a variety of pastures and dietary resources were explored, but that these changed remarkably little over time. In the human δ15N however we found a significant increase with time across the different archaeological cultures. This trend could be observed in all time periods and archaeological cultures (Bell Beaker phenomenon excluded),

"The massive influx of the CWC from the eastern steppes into central Europe in the FN is detectable in the MES in the first occurrences of the maternal haplogroups I, U2 and T1, and also in genome-wide analyses. The dietary profile once again exhibits an increase in the mean δ15N values, to 10.1 ± 1.0 ‰. The BBC, which spread somewhat later throughoutnorth and central Europe (with the arrival of the CWC jointly making up Event C) and whoseorigins are presumed to have been in south-western Europe, constitutes an exception, not just from the point of view of genetics. In contrast to the general diachronic trend consisting of raised δ15N values in the cultural groups examined, the BBC exhibited a nutritional decrease in mean δ15N values to 9.7 ± 0.7 ‰. The divergence between the CWC and the BBC to be seen in their funerary rites, despite their chronological and sometimes also territorial coexistence, is thus also visible in their dietary habits. A distinct increase in the proportion of animal protein in the human diet can be identified over time, a trend which only the people from the BBC did not follow

Jutta Lechterbeck-"According to our pattern of reasoning discontinuity between the settlement phases connected to CW and BB material cultures, as well as continuity between BB culture and EBA, becomes visible. It can be seen foremost in the use of different parts of landscapes for plant and animal production, as indicated in the pollen record and in the macroremains. The pollen record shows no continuity between CW and BB but between BB and EBA". As with the pollen record, the BB phase macro-remains indicate more open spaces. A new cultivar– spelt – also occurs, which will become the mostimportant crop in the EBA.

Can you imagine which is the European region where the oldest spelt cultivation has been documented?

New crops, new way of exploiting the land, different diet, different resources, different culture. It seems difficult to understand how a group belonging to the CWC became the BBC. Actually, this never happened

But beware, that does not mean that there is no possibility of P312 individuals originating in the CWC or in German Neolithic cultures who joined the BBC and taking advantage of the mobile character of this culture will be dispersed throughout Europe.

It seems difficult to understand how a group belonging to the CWC became the BBC. Actually, this never happened.

You should read more carefully what I've written. For example...

For all I know, the Bell Beaker cultural package might have come from Iberia, the Carpathian Basin, or even North Africa. But this post isn't about that, it's about the homeland of the classic Beaker warrior male, with his R1b-P312, Corded Ware-like genome-wide genetic structure and brachycephalic skull. I'm almost certain now that this was the Lower Rhine region.

unknown"However, the entire Portuguese Atlantic coast to Galicia has numerous deposits and from there they jump to Brittany, never to Asturias, Cantabria or Gascony. Why?"

trading/mining (imo)

i think there was a pre-existing neolithic trading network centered on the Mediterranean (with an extension in southern Portugal) connecting them to various resource extraction sites on the edge of the world (from their point of view) e.g. amber from the Baltic and soft metal mining sites in Iberia, Brittany, SW Britain, Ireland etc.

so initially, before any later population expansions due to whatever, the network would be a collection of nodes: the actual resource extraction sites themselves (e.g. tin mines in SW England, gold and silver mines in Brittany, amber trading sites near the Baltic etc) and the minimum number of trading posts along the coasts and rivers necessary to connect these resource extraction sites into a network (e.g Rhine).

so whether these dudes were local or came from afar i think they initially spread by hopping between these pre-existing nodes rather than via a tribal migration wave.

them mee"If any paternal farmer ancestry were to be found in Beakers, it would likely be I, G or J, not R1b, because again, R1b-M269 is from the steppe."

i think R1 is originally from the interior but Villabruna showed it was *possible* for some of it to reach the coast before the PIE expansion (maybe cos they'd killed off their local megafauna sooner?) so just for the sake of argument taking that possibility as a premise that would then require

1) the R1b population surviving the farmer expansion - possibly implying they lived on land unsuitable for the farmers e.g. wetlands, with bride-swapping between the two populations leading to them getting some LBK or Atlantic coast type farmer ancestry on the maternal side followed by the PIE expansion and maybe some more bride-swapping with them - implying they'd end up with both "old" and "new" steppe ancestry and possibly both Atlantic coast and central European farmer ancestry (if there's a difference?)

and

2) some explanation for a dramatic boomerang effect where what was initially a small(?) refuge population surviving the farmer expansion in unsuitable terrain became dominant across western Europe: disease? weapons? food?